


Cassandra Cain and the School of Magic

by tiamat100



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cassandra goes to Hogwarts, Crossover, Hogwarts AU, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-19 06:51:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3600381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamat100/pseuds/tiamat100
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra Cain is living on the streets of England when she is woken by a letter falling by her head, which she ignores. When McGonagall goes to investigate, she takes the young witch to Hogwarts, although no one is quite sure how they can educate a girl who can't even understand speech. Title may change. Multichap AU. Also posted on fanfiction.net under the name tamsin672.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Behind 4 Thackery Road

She’d been living on the streets for years by the time the letter came. She didn’t know that it was for her, when she woke up and the envelope was lying beside her. She didn’t know how to read the words scrawled on the front in emerald green ink, or she would have known that it said:

_Miss Cassandra Cain  
Next to the rubbish bins_

_Behind 4 Thackerey Road_

_London_

 

She picked it up, turned it over, looked at it to check it wasn’t dangerous. Then she shrugged, dropped it back on the ground, and walked away.

The next day, she was awoken in the early morning by another envelope landing just beside her. She knew that it was one of the ways other people communicated, the ones who used words she didn’t understand instead of reading body language and gestures. She ignored it, thinking it must have been intended for one of the homes nearby, and went to scavenge some breakfast. She went to a different alley this time and slept beneath a dumpster. The smell might’ve been terrible, but it was warmer than sleeping in the open and the grey skies indicated that it would rain.

She wrapped herself in a stolen coat and hoped it wouldn’t flood.

The noise that woke her came out of nowhere. One moment, she was sleeping lightly, the floor damp beneath her, subconsciously aware of the sound of the rainfall and the drunken party that had passed ½ an hour before. The next moment, a great crack sounded like a gunshot. Cassandra was awake immediately and rolling behind the dumpster, putting it between her and the gun until she could assess the situation. She was small, so there was just enough space between the dumpster and the wall. She peeked over the top. To her surprise, she could see no sign of a gun. There was a woman standing in the alley, facing the other way. Cassandra hadn’t heard her approach. She wore an emerald green cloak and her hair was pulled back into a tight, severe looking bun. She was clearly turning around as if looking for something, or someone.

She was also holding a weapon that emitted some kind of light. It looked harmless, disguised to look like a wooden stick, but Cassandra could tell by the way the woman held it that it was a weapon. Despite this, the woman didn’t seem as if she was preparing herself for attack. She called out gently.   
“Cassandra? Cassandra Cain? I mean you no harm. My name is Professor McGonagall. Are you there?”

Cassandra didn’t understand the words, but she recognised one. Cain. That word had been used a lot when she’d been with Him. Her father, the one who taught her to fight. The one who taught her to kill.

She could tell by the woman’s body language that she was worried about something- no, someone. A person who she thought was in danger. She wanted to help them.

Cassandra didn’t dare show herself. This woman had to be an associate of Cain’s, and that meant she was looking for Cassandra. It meant that she would try and take Cass back to the man she’d run away from.

McGonagall flicked her wand. “Homenum Revelio.” She pronounced, and then suddenly Cassandra felt a swooshing kind of sensation, like the wind was rushing past her, and McGonagall turned towards her hiding place. Cassandra ducked down behind the dumpster again, breathing as quietly as possible. She prepared herself for fighting.

McGonagall’s face twisted with a mixture of horror and pity as she approached the dumpster. With another flick of her wand, the dumpster suddenly leapt away, leaving a terrified Cassandra exposed.

She didn’t stop to think. She did what she was trained to do and attacked. She didn’t want to hurt this woman, but if she was an associate of Cain’s, Cassandra couldn’t risk being found. She leapt at the woman, hit her to make sure she’d fall unconscious, and ran.

She was too busy running to register more than a flicker of surprise that the woman hadn’t reacted as if she even realised she was under attack, and certainly showed no indications of being a trained fighter or assassin like Cain.

She didn’t sleep that night. First she went to a big department store and stole new clothes, leaving the old ones hidden in a bin a few streets away from the shop. Then she started walking.   
She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew what to look out for. Once she reached a train station, she watched as people exchanged bits of white and blue paper for  the orange tickets that you needed to get onto a train platform. She knew by now that simply leaping over the barrier would attract the wrong kind of attention. Although none of the police were remotely capable of catching her, she didn’t want to make it easy for that woman or anyone else to find her.   
She mixed with the crowd for a few moments, watching those boards filled with unintelligible figures. Then her hand slipped into the pocket of the young man standing near her, and she took his ticket and was gone without him ever realising that he’d been robbed. She walked straight onto the platform and into the first train that came.

At the first stop, she got off the train and walked to another platform before getting a train that was moving in the opposite direction. Then she found a seat and sat down to wait.

Several hours later, when the train stopped at a station for longer than the usual few minutes and everyone in her carriage stood to disembark, Cassandra followed them, losing herself in the crowd. She was in a completely different area this time, and it had been about 14 hours since she’d run from the woman in the alley. Still, she wasn’t going to stop yet. She’d had time to rest physically on the train, and there was no need for her to sleep now. She stole a backpack, some food and a blanket from houses nearby and started walking.

The aim was to get as far away as she could from that alley, so that even if her father found out she’d been to the station, he wouldn't be able to find her. She couldn’t go back to him. He’d fight her and shoot her and ask her to kill, and she would never, ever kill again.

She walked all that night and most of the next day before they appeared. Shortly after dusk, when Cassandra was considering finding somewhere to sleep (seeing as there had been no sign that she was being pursued, and even she could only stay awake for so long), she heard that same cracking sound, the one that sounded just like a gun shot. Then more. Alarmed, she whirled around, half-expecting to say David Cain standing there, pointing a gun at her and expecting her to dodge the bullets. Instead, she was shocked to see that she was surrounded by numerous figures in cloaks, all holding the same wooden stick weapons that the woman from the alley had used.

She was already moving when the beams of red light shot from the wands. She dodged 3, 4, 5 beams before one caught her in the chest and she fell back, stunned. She felt a burst of terror before she fell unconscious.

When she woke up, she was restrained. Thick ropes tied all of her limbs to a bed on which she lay, and the woman in the emerald green cloak was standing beside it.

An elderly man with a long white beard and equally long white hair stood next to her. Both were looking at Cassandra.   
They already knew she was awake, had probably used medicine to wake her up themselves, so she didn’t try to hide the fact that she had regained consciousness. Instead she screamed and writhed, trying to find some weakness in the rope, but it just seemed to get tighter everytime she pulled at it.   
“It’s alright, Cassandra!” The old man said. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

His body said intelligence, subtlety. This was a man capable of ruthless manipulation. His bearing said he wanted to help her, but he would be a very dangerous foe.

She didn’t stop moving. She could lie with her body, maybe she’d finally found someone else who could. Besides, other people had thought they were helping her in the past and only made things worse.

“Poppy, can she understand us?” McGonagall called questioningly. Another woman bustled over and lay her wand against Cassandra’s forehead, though Cass bared her teeth and pressed as far as she could against the mattress. Thankfully, the woman didn’t seem to want to cause her pain, and although strange symbols appeared above her, there was no pain.

“Stay still!” The woman reproached. “Hmmm. She doesn’t seem to have a grasp of words at all. Her hearing is fine, very good actually, but she doesn’t understand what we’re saying.”

“Is she foreign? Perhaps we could find another language-”

Poppy shook her head. “It’s not just English. She doesn’t understand any language. Words are a total mystery to her. In fact-” She held the wand above Cassandra’s throat, something which made Cassandra protest more despite knowing the woman meant her no harm. She was restrained and someone was holding a weapon close to her throat. How could she not be afraid?

Poppy closed her eyes briefly. “The poor girl. She’s never been taught to speak. I doubt she’s ever articulated anything at all. Her vocal chords are weak, as if they’ve never been used.”  
Her body said she felt pity, sorrow, sympathy, horror. Cassandra bristled. She didn’t need their pity!

“She must have been raised in total isolation.” Poppy murmured. “Not allowed to learn to speak or even hear a voice until she’d passed that stage of her development.”

All of them looked horrified now, and even concerned. They looked at Cassandra as if they both pitied and feared her.

Cassandra collapsed against the bed, finally stopping her struggles and pretending to be exhausted. She’d noticed that every time the ropes started to weaken, the elderly man’s wand would twitch and they would be tighter again. She didn’t know how he was doing it, but she was sure he wouldn’t let her escape while he sat there. She concluded that she would have to wait until they left and then try dislocating her thumb to slip her hand  through the bindings. Once she’d done that, she should be able to free her other hand and untie the bonds. She stretched her hands, making just a little more space for herself, and held them still in a stretched position. If the rope tightened again it would be painful, but she could tell that they didn’t mean her harm. That didn’t mean she was safe, seeing as she didn’t know who they were working for, and she wasn’t going to remain a prisoner even if they were harmless.

Unfortunately, her apparent collapse didn’t seem to encourage them to leave her alone.

 

“I don’t know any spells that could help.” Madam Pomfrey murmured.   
“Nor I.” said Dumbledore, his voice sad. “I doubt if a child like her has ever existed before.”

“Must we tie her to the bed?” Pomfrey asked, frowning. “It must be terrifying for her.”

McGonagall sniffed. “She attacked me and knocked me unconscious without provocation, Poppy. I don’t think we can risk removing the bonds until we find some way to communicate.”

“Perhaps Professor Snape?” Madam Pomfrey suggested. “He’s a legilimens. If he can just figure out how she communicates, we could at least explain that we mean her no harm.”

McGonagall frowned. “But how can we teach her? She’s violent, and if she can’t understand us I don’t know what we can do. She would never be able to follow instruction or read magical theory or even utter an incantation! Yet, if we don’t find some way to help her control her magic, she’ll only grow more dangerous.”

Albus nodded. “It would be disastrous. We must keep her here. Minerva, would you fetch Professor Snape?”  
Mcgonagall gave a curt nod and left, still frowning.

Madam Pomfrey looked down at the girl. Cassandra’s face was carefully blank, but she thought she could see confusion and fear in the girls eyes.   
“I’ll contact St Mungo’s. Not officially- they'd put her in a high security ward with prisoners, and I’d hate to see what the Ministry would make of this. Still, I can ask some specialist Healers there about mind magic and ways we can help her. Maybe even present it as a hypothetical case. If you’ll excuse me, Albus.”  
She turned to walk back to her office, hoping she could find something useful.

Albus stood and watched the girl for several minutes with his piercing blue eyes. She stared definitely back at him. He gave her a small smile and turned to go, whistling.

 

Finally they’d left her alone. Cassandra concentrated, gritting her teeth as she dislocated her thumb in order to pull her hand from her restraints.    
Moments later, she was gone, running as fast as she could down a long corridor. There were portraits on the walls, and ancient looking suits of armour. She saw one with a sword that looked like it was in passable condition and leapt at it, trying to grab the sword to defend herself.   
She gasped in horror as the armour, which she had been sure was empty, moved and a steel hand grabbed her hand and twisted until pain forced her to drop the sword.

She didn’t understand- it wasn’t alive, it couldn’t be but that hadn’t prevented it from acting like it was. Was it a machine, a new kind of security system? Perhaps.   
Rather than trying to take it again, she ran. Before her, a pearly white person emerged from a solid wall. Afraid of what seemed impossible, she kicked at the creature and nearly fell when, instead of colliding, her foot passed straight through.   
“Petrificus Totalus!”

Cassandra felt something hit her in the back. She suddenly fell forward, unable to move. She was terrified. Why couldn’t she move? This had never happened before!

She couldn’t stop herself from landing face-down on the cold floor. Two sets of footsteps approached. She could tell from the sound that it was McGonagall and one other.

“This is our new student, I presume?” The voice was male, cool and smooth, and the tone was sinister. A hand reached out and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her over so that she was facing upwards. Try as she might, Cassandra was helpless to stop it.

When the hand released her, she was looking up at a sallow-faced, hook nosed man with black eyes and hair. She tried desperately not to look afraid, to lie with her body so that he didn’t think he’d won, but her muscles wouldn’t move. Nothing would.

“Did you have to hit her in the back, Severus?” McGonagall’s voice sounded mildly disapproving. “She’ll have bruises.”

“Quiet.” Snape snapped, looking into Cassandra’s eyes. She felt a strange sensation in her head and imagined kicking it away. It didn’t work. She imagined attacking this feeling- it seemed invasive, wrong, like it shouldn’t be there- with all of her skill. She saw Snape flinch and the feeling receded for a moment. Then suddenly it returned, stronger than before. She was suddenly swept up in an old memory-

Cain shooting at her while her back was turned, sparring with him, that final moment when she’d run away. She saw a brief flash of the man she’d killed looking down at her and rebelled against the memory with everything she had.

The feeling vanished. Snape drew back. He seemed shocked.

“She reads body language.” He murmured.

“Excuse me?”

“She can’t understand words, but it seems like Miss Cain can read body language to an incredible extent. She doesn’t think in words, but gestures and movement. Simply by looking at your movements, she can tell what you’re feeling, what you’ll do next, and even some of what you’re thinking. But her understanding is different from ours. She knows we communicate with words, but she can’t understand them at all.”

“Remarkable.” McGonagall said, astonished. “But why did she attack me?”

“She lives on the streets.” Snape replied. “Even someone trying to help her could inadvertently return her to her...father, I think. He did terrible things to her to make her this way.”

Snape looked carefully at Cassandra. Trying to make his intentions clear and seem open and honest (something he didn’t usually strive for), he said slowly , “We want you to stay with us. We will give you food and protection. We mean you no harm.” He flicked his wand and suddenly Cassandra was free, able to move again.

This time, she didn’t run. She was certain that Snape had seen her memories as she had, and she’d watched his reactions to them. He’d been horrified by David Cain, and so was McGonagall.  They wouldn’t return her to him, and whatever weapons they had were more dangerous than anything she’d previously encountered. She might not be able to leave.

She stood up slowly making sure her face and body gave away nothing. They’d learnt enough about her already.

McGonagall held out a hand towards her, moving slowly as if trying to avoid startling a frightened animal. Her voice was kind. “Will you come back to the Hospital Wing? We won’t force you, Cassandra.”

Cassandra didn’t know the words, but she knew what they wanted. She didn’t take McGonagall's hand. Instead she started walking towards the room she’d escaped from. She’d be careful, though. She wasn’t about to let them tie her up again.

 

 


	2. Chapter Two

Cassandra sat down carefully on the bed, keeping her feet on the floor. She let them poke at her with their sticks, though she watched their movements very carefully. She didn’t undress. When Madam Pomfrey brought her a tray of food, she eyed it warily until Snape reached out and took a mouthful from her plate. She studied him as he swallowed. Only then, once she was satisfied that it wasn’t drugged or poisoned, did she eat the food. It was very different from the scraps she usually managed to scavenge on the streets. She watched their wands very intently, trying to figure out how this new weapon worked. It was frightening, the way that it seemed to be used for so many things. One moment it was used as a weapon to knock her unconscious, and the next it was tapped against her hand to erase all lingering pain from dislocating her thumb. It made it more dangerous, because she couldn’t assume whenever she saw one that it would be used as a weapon. She had to make sure she knew what the intentions of the person holding it were. Some meant no harm while others surely would. She watched the adults around her carefully, memorising how they moved the wands to perform differents spells and what the effects were. She wished she could ask them to give her a demonstration of battling with the weapons, so that she could be absolutely certain of which movements indicated danger.   
She slept very lightly that night, rising every time she heard a noise. She was too jumpy here. She wondered if she could get one of those strange sticks to use herself. She knew how to use most weapons, including guns, even if usually her skill made them unnecessary.   
She wondered if that stick could make it so she could understand their words. A strange longing filled her. She’d seen how other people used words, how it brought them together or kept them apart, and she wished more than anything that she could be a part of that as well. She’d even tried to identify the different sounds, to recognise them, but she could never associate them properly with what she would understand from the movements. People seemed to use the wrong words, or maybe the words just had several different meanings. She couldn’t understand it. Her way of communicating was much more efficient, but no one could ever understand what she meant. If only everybody could do what she could and communicate solely through looks and movement. Then she wouldn’t always have to feel so alone.   
For a while, Cass just lay on the bed and watched as Madam Pomfrey bustled around the room. Pomfrey would talk even when it was just the two of them in the room, as if she expected Cassandra to just suddenly start understanding her. Over the next few days, she bought books into the main ward and sat reading them.   
Cassandra didn’t do anything for the first day, not wanting to give them too detailed an idea of her capabilities. She just sat and watched them.   
On the second day, she decided to take advantage of not needing to hide or scavenge for food, and took the opportunity to keep to a regular exercise routine.   
She didn’t have any equipment- no sparring partner, no weights, no training dummy- but she could at least go through the motions to keep herself in shape. Madam Pomfrey set her book aside the moment that Cassandra stood and stepped away from the bed. After a few minutes of push-ups and other basic exercises, Pomfrey returned to her book, sparing only a cursory glance for Cassandra to check that she wasn’t causing any damage.   
When Cassandra moved on to the fluid, practised movements of tai chi, Madam Pomfrey peeked over her book curiously to watch her in amazement. Even to someone with no knowledge of it, it was clear Cassandra was very skilful.   
Then Cassandra’s movements changed. For a moment Madam Pomfrey thought she was performing some strange, chaotic kind of dance, before she dropped her book in alarm as she realised Cassandra was fighting with an imaginary opponent, punching and kicking as fiercely as if she were fighting for her life. Pomfrey had a horrifying thought- was Cassandra having some kind of hallucination?  
She stood and moved towards Cassandra, who was facing in the opposite direction. Suddenly she whirled and threw a kick in Madam Pomfrey’s direction. Pomfrey, through her fear, noted a sudden look of alarm in the girls face before she managed to stop herself just before her foot made contact with the startled healer.   
Cassandra, afraid and alarmed by the near miss and the stupidity of a woman who would approach an assassin while they were working out, focused on making her anger and fear as obvious as possible. She gestured to Madam Pomfrey, then her foot, and then mimed falling backwards, unconscious. She glared, hoping that even someone so incapable of reading body language would understand that. As Madam Pomfrey blanched, Cassandra turned and walked away to do stretches at the other end of the room.  
She was aware of Madam Pomfrey’s alarm and confusion, aware of her throwing something into the fireplace and saying something, aware of the other adults suddenly arriving. madam Pomfrey conversed with them in low tones. Cassandra imagined her emotions must be clear even to those who couldn’t read them so easily. Aside from glancing at them to see a mixture of alarm and mild curiosity, Cassandra paid them little attention. Rather than try to spar with an imaginary opponent again, once she finished her stretches she went through the motions of several moves, starting slowly before increasing her speed until the adults could barely tell what she was doing. She noticed them turning towards her and their voices quieting, but she didn’t care. She knew where they were, and none would approach her without giving her more than enough time to stop. When she finally finished, breathing only a little heavily, she jumped at the sound of applause from Dumbledore. He looked intrigued and pleased by her display, although the others seemed more uncertain.   
Dumbledore smiled, made a cheerful suggestion to the room at large and swept out, soon followed by McGonagall and Snape.   
Cassandra, tired of remaining in the Hospital Wing, made to follow them. Pomfrey placed a gentle hand (which was shaking a little) on her arm to stop her. Her words were meaningless, but her body said “Where are you going?”   
Cassandra pointed at the door and blinked. Pomfrey hesitated.   
“There’s no harm in letting her see the place, Poppy.” McGonagall reassured her. “Why not show her the castle? Make sure she’s aware of the dangers. It must be dull just sitting on that bed all day, and it would be far better for you to show her around than for her to sneak off alone.”  
Madam Pomfrey didn’t seem sure, but she led Cassandra through the door anyway. Cass would have preferred to explore on her own, but she knew that would also make it more dangerous. Although she was pretty confident that she could beat anything that attacked her (no one had ever proved her wrong before), she still didn’t know what that strange pearly white person had been. She supposed they were a kind of super powered human, or perhaps something else altogether.   
Madam Pomfrey talked nearly constantly as she showed Cass around the castle. She supposed that Pomfrey just wanted to fill the silence, something she’d noticed other people do before in Cass’ presence. The things she saw were incredible. She saw paintings that weren’t just still images. The figures in them moved! This frightened her until she realised that, although the figures could travel from painting to painting, they couldn’t exist outside of the artwork. There was no danger of them leaping out to attack her, so she smiled back at them. Pomfrey seemed to greet some of the figures as if they were people. The building she was in was huge, as big as one of the department stores in a large city, or possibly even bigger. She looked with interest at the stone walls and took every opportunity to gaze through the window at the grounds, which seemed just as large. She wondered if she could exercise outside. It would be pleasant. She tried to ask Madam Pomfrey by miming a running motion and pointing outside, but Pomfrey pretended not to understand.   
When they saw the Entrance Hall and the Great Hall, Cass was amazed. The Great Hall had a sky, as if it were outside, but she could tell by the lack of a breeze that she was still inside. She also hadn’t seen this place through any of the windows. She gazed up at the ceiling, fascinated by this miracle of putting the sky inside. She would have been reluctant to leave if Madam Pomfrey hadn’t led her to huge doors that could only lead out onto the grounds.  
Once she was out in the fresh air, Cassandra looked around carefully. She wanted to be sure that she could find her way around. She looked at Madam Pomfrey and mimed doing stretches and then running. Pomfrey pointed at the forest and her body language told Cass it was very dangerous in there. She nodded at Pomfrey and started running, keeping well away from the forest. While it might be interesting to explore on her own, she could tell that Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t want her to go inside. Running, when you weren’t just trying to escape or get out of a difficult situation, could be a very enjoyable experience for Cass. The movement was simple and repetitive, but freeing in a way that few other things were. She was reluctant to stop when Madam Pomfrey gestured that she should return to the castle, but she obeyed. She didn’t want to offend her hosts yet, but she wouldn’t be obedient to them forever. Still, until she understood more about what was going on, it was best to stay on their good side. 

That night she ate more than she had previously before sleeping. She still slept lightly, but although she was subconsciously aware of the noises around her she didn’t wake fully until morning.   
She rose before Madam Pomfrey did and began doing some gentle stretches. She glanced at the door. Madam Pomfrey wasn’t awake yet, but no one had forbidden her from leaving. She finished her stretches and slipped out of the Hospital Wing.   
The castle was very quiet, as if she were the only person there. The figures in the portraits were still sleeping, so she made no noise as she walked past. She looked at everything with just as much interest as the day before, only this time she didn’t make any attempt to hide it. She wondered if the figures in the portraits were real people, like her, or whether they were just some kind of recording.  
She remembered most of what she’d been shown the day before, so as she made her way to where she thought the entrance hall was, she was shocked to find that the staircase wasn’t where she remembered. There were no stairs there at all. She could try and find another route to the first floor, but this was the only one Madam Pomfrey had shown her. Had they destroyed the stairs just so she couldn’t escape? She might have thought so, if she hadn’t seen something incredible. A staircase across the hall was moving. Not moving like an escalator, but actually swinging around to link two completely different places.   
A little frightened, Cassandra made her way back to the hospital wing. How would she ever find her way around safely if the staircases kept moving?  
By the time she reached the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey was awake and talking anxiously to Professor Snape.   
“I woke up and she was gone, Severus, I don’t know where- Cassandra! There you are! You foolish girl, don’t you know better than to run off without telling anyone?”  
Cassandra could tell that Madam Pomfrey was angry at her for running off, and had been worried about her. She frowned at Madam Pomfrey and made a shrugging motion with her shoulders. She wasn’t going to stay cooped up or be babysat the whole time.  
“Perhaps Professor Dumbledore has the right idea.” Snape said dryly. “She needs to be shown the dangers of the castle so she can avoid them. I very much doubt that any of us could keep her cooped up here without her consent.”  
Pomfrey bit her lip. “She’s such a little thing, and I never know how much she understands of anything I say. I’m worried she’ll hurt herself, or meet Peeves.”  
Snape nodded. “Yet it is unavoidable that she learn her way around. In just 3 weeks, the school will be opening to the students.”  
Madam Pomfrey looked horrified. “We certainly can’t allow her free reign of the school once the students arrive!”  
“Why not?” Snape asked coolly. “We must figure out a way to teach her before her magic becomes uncontrolled. She has been living on the streets for many years, I have no doubt that she can take care of herself.”  
Cassandra just sat and watched them talk. She didn’t understand the details, but she understood enough. They were arguing about her. Madam Pomfrey was very worried about her and wanted to keep her contained. Professor Snape was worried about her, but believed she needed to be taught how to keep herself safe in the castle. She preferred Professor Snape’s view.   
The days passed by uneventfully. Cassandra would wake, go for a brief walk around the castle (usually accompanied by Pomfrey, who seemed to wake as soon as Cassandra got out of bed).Then, after she memorised as much as possible of the castle’s layout, she would run outside before returning to the Hospital Wing and exercising.   
A week in, Madam Pomfrey led her to a room she hadn’t been in before. She opened the door to find a large room with a bed in one corner. Weights were on a shelf by the other wall. There was an exercise mat and two training dummies.   
Cassandra looked at them quickly, then smiled. She’d been afraid that they were trying to train her to do something, but Pomfrey’s body language left no doubt that this was a gift. Madam Pomfrey gestured to the bed and then to Cass. Cass nodded, understanding. This room was for her to use and sleep in. Possibly it was part of an attempt to keep her contained by putting almost everything she’d need in one room, but it would still make her days much less dull. Madam Pomfrey pointed out the adjoining bathroom, and Cass tried to communicate happiness. She smiled at them until they’d all left her. Then she sat down on the bed, revelling in knowing that she finally had a place all of her own.


End file.
